Public Release: 21-Feb-2014
The No. 1 human-robot conference in the world comes to Bielefeld

Researchers at Bielefeld University's CITEC Center of Excellence and the CoR-Lab research institute have been successful contenders for the ninth HRI conference, and they are bringing HRI 2014 to the CITEC building on the North Campus. More than 300 researchers are expected to attend.

'The HRI presents outstanding international research on how human-robot interaction functions' says Professor Dr.-Ing. Gerhard Sagerer, Rektor of Bielefeld University, who will be participating in the conference himself as a CITEC researcher. 'What's so special about the conference is its interdisciplinary approach. It brings together findings from numerous disciplines such as robotics, psychology, anthropology, design, and artificial intelligence and not just engineering. This approach - applying knowledge from different subjects - is also typical for Bielefeld University, CITEC, and the CoR-Lab. That's yet another reason why Bielefeld is such a good location for the conference.'

Researchers from 25 different nations will be meeting at the conference to discuss new theories and research findings. Topics range from developing naturally interacting robots, across visual attention in robotics systems, to emotional robots. One workshop, for example, will be considering which tasks assistance robots can perform for the aged and how far the aged will accept them. At another workshop, visitors will be discussing how robots can become culturally aware and adapt their language and behaviour to people from different cultures.

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The organizers of the conference are the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the IEEE Computer Society, both based in New York (USA). The ACM was founded in 1947 as the first scientific association for computer science. The IEEE Computer Society represents the interests of professionals and researchers working in informatics and information technology. It is part of a worldwide professional association of electrical and electronics engineers.

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